NOT JUST ANY MAN – CHAPTER 18

The following material is an extract from NOT JUST ANY MAN, A Novel of Old New Mexico, Copyright © 2018 Loretta Miles Tollefson. Published by Palo Flechado Press, Santa Fe, NM

A Note about Spanish Terms: This novel is set in northern New Mexico and reflects as much as possible the local dialect at that time. Even today, Northern New Mexico Spanish is a unique combination of late 1500s Spanish, indigenous words from the First Peoples of the region and of Mexico, and terms that filtered in with the French and American trappers and traders. I’ve tried to represent the resulting mixture as faithfully as possible. My primary source of information was Rubén Cobos’ excellent work, A Dictionary of New Mexico and Southern Colorado Spanish (University of New Mexico Press, 2003). Any errors in spelling, usage, or definition are solely my responsibility.

CHAPTER 18

The next day they move into the pine-filled mountains of the Gila and Gerald’s spirits lift. He grins at himself. He’s a mountain man in the sense that the mountains feel more like home to him than anywhere else. He wonders if Suzanna Peabody feels the same way. She has, after all, grown up in Taos, the mountains behind her, the broad flat fields of the Taos Valley spreading westward toward yet more mountain peaks. Which does she prefer? Someplace where she can garden, that’s certain. He chuckles and glances down. Not that this soil would be right for that. It’s entirely too steep and rocky for potatoes.

The men push hard through the territory they’ve already trapped. There’s no sense in trying for beaver again here, and Young seems determined to make up for lost time. The trappers move steadily through the mountains, bedding down late, rising before the sun is truly over the canyon rims, living on short rations. Their only fresh meat is what happens to cross their path. The pace is so intense that it’s something of a shock when the line of trappers halts abruptly the afternoon of the fourth day.

Then a string of four trappers and three mules comes into view. They’re working their way up a dry arroyo that intersects with Young’s trajectory. He holds up a hand and his men all stop to watch the other group scramble toward them, though Enoch Jones huffs impatiently at the delay.

“Chalifoux!” Young says when the newcomers get within speaking distance. “I thought you were trapping south with James Baird!”

“Baird, he is dead,” the tallest of the two long-haired Frenchmen says. “La maladie, it got him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“We came on anyway,” Chalifoux says. He gestures behind him. “Me, my brother, Grijalva, and him.”

The men behind Chalifoux nod at Young politely. The youngest, the one with the dark skin and tightly-curled black hair, seems to tense as Young’s gaze lands on him, but Young only nods absently and turns back to Chalifoux. “We’ve got thirty in our troop,” he says. “I figure that’s about all the Gila can handle at any one time. You headin’ that way?”

“It is as God wills,” Chalifoux answers. “Perhaps to the north, toward the salt bluffs of the Navajo.” He shrugs. “It is possible we go to the Mariposa villages, but it is also possible that Monsieur St. Vrain and Monsieur Williams are there now and nothing will remain for us. Have you heard of this?”

Ewing Young chuckles and shakes his head. “I heard they were headed that general direction, but you never know with Old Bill. He could be on the Yellowstone for all I know.”

Chalifoux grunts. “That is the God’s truth,” he agrees. He looks down the line of Young’s men. “It is a full group you have.” He scratches his bandanna-covered forehead and nods toward the third man in his small train. “Grijalva here, he shot a buck.” He jerks his head toward the pack animal being led by the dark-skinned young man. “A good size one. You want we share the meat tonight?”

“Sure, why not?” Ewing Young grins and nods toward the end of his own train. “Fall in behind and we’ll help you to cut that deer down to a more packable size.”

The Frenchman’s party stands and waits as Young’s men file past. Gerald eyes the dead buck as he passes the men on the side of the trail. His stomach rumbles. A good meal of venison will make for a pleasant evening.

But the evening turns unpleasant when the visitors produce whisky to accompany the meal and Enoch Jones takes more than his share. When he drinks, Jones is apt to be more surly than usual, and the presence of the young black man seems to aggravate him.

He’s leaning sullenly against a large rock that juts from the ground a few yards beyond the fire, nursing yet another drink, when the younger man approaches, a small book in his hand. The stranger nods to Gerald, who’s mending harness on the other side of the fire, then crouches down, opens the book, and angles its pages so the light will fall on them.

Jones scowls and leans forward. “What’re ya doin’ there?” he demands. He sets his tin cup on top of the big rock, steps forward, and nudges at the black man with his foot. “Hey! I asked a question! What’re ya doin’?”

The man looks up. “I’m reading,” he says. He turns the book so Jones can see the spine. “It’s a play by Mr. William Shakespeare called Othello.”

Jones scowls at him. “What’s yer name, anyway?”

“I’m called Blackstone.” The man considers Jones for a long moment, then asks. “And what is your name?”

Jones stalks away into the night. Blackstone’s eyes follow him thoughtfully, then return to his book.

But Jones is back a few minutes later, followed by Chalifoux. Jones jabs a thumb toward Blackstone. “You see what he’s doin’?” he demands.

Chalifoux grunts. “It appears to me that he is reading.” He turns away, but Jones blocks his path.

“That’s illegal!” Jones says. “You can’t let him do that!”

“He is a free man, Mr. Jones,” Chalifoux answers. “He can do as he likes.”

Jones’ face turns red. “He’s a nigger! He ain’t allowed t’ read!”

Chalifoux raises an eyebrow. “This is a new law? One I know nothing of?” He turns to Blackstone. “What is this law?”

The younger man looks up, moves a small ribbon to mark his place, and closes the book. “I believe there is a law in South Carolina which makes it illegal for slaves to learn to read or write.” He shifts the book into his left hand, lifting it as if its very bulk is pleasant to him. “However, as you say, I’m a free man. So the law wouldn’t apply to me even if we were still in the United States.”

“Which it is certain we are not,” Chalifoux says. He bends, picks up a stray pine cone, and tosses it into the fire.

Blackstone glances at Jones, then away. “And there’s certainly no such law here,” he says.

“Damn uppity nigger!” Jones growls. He surges past Chalifoux, leans down, and grabs Blackstone’s arm. “You talkin’ back t’ me?”

Blackstone rises in one easy motion, elbowing Jones aside. “I was speaking to Mr. Chalifoux,” he says evenly.

Jones reaches for the Shakespeare, but Blackstone lifts it out of his reach. Then Jones’ foot strikes sideways, into Blackstone’s shin, and the younger man stumbles and loses his grip on the book, which lands, page end down, on the stones beside the fire.

“You bastard!” Blackstone turns and shoves Jones with both hands. Jones sprawls backward and onto the ground beside the big rock.

Blackstone swings back to the fire and the Shakespeare, but Gerald has already risen, leaned across, and lifted it away from the licking flames.

As Gerald hands Blackstone the book, Jones heaves himself from the ground. He’s halfway to the fire again, his fists doubled and ready for battle, when Ewing Young steps from the darkness.

“What’s goin’ on?” Young asks.

Jones stops short. “Nigger bastard sucker punched me!” he growls. He jerks his head at Blackstone and Gerald. “They’re two of a kind,” he says. “I’d string ’em both up if rope wasn’t worth more’n they are.” He glares at Blackstone. “You ain’t seen the last o’ me.” Then he turns and stalks into the night.

 “Is he always so pleasant, that one?” Chalifoux asks Young.

Young spreads his hands, palms up. “There’s one in every bunch.” He turns to Blackstone. “We aren’t all of his opinion.”

Blackstone nods as he brushes soot from the book’s pages. “I can see that,” he says. He looks up. “No harm done, thanks to some quick action on this gentleman’s part.”

Young grins. “Yes, I hear Gerald’s become especially partial to books since he arrived in nuevomexico. Books and the people who read them.”

Gerald smiles unwillingly and turns away. Has his time with the Peabody’s been that noticeable? First Wolfskill and now Young. But then, Taos is a small village. It’s natural enough for everyone to know everyone else’s business. But he isn’t sure he likes that they do.

And Young didn’t remark on any other similarities between him and Blackstone. Only the books. Was Young just being polite, skirting the issue of his race?

Gerald shakes his head. Is he really passing?

“It appears that I am,” he mutters. He’s not sure if he’s glad or anxious about that. The lack of total honesty goes against the grain. But then, he’s never claimed to be white. He just hasn’t brought the subject up. And he’s ignored Jones’ remarks. Of course, that’s the only thing any decent man, either white or black, would do. The man’s a bastard. The best way to deal with someone like that is to have as little as possible to do with him. But Gerald wonders how feasible that would be in the long run in a town the size of Taos.

Don Fernando de Taos is still on Gerald’s mind the next day as he and the rest of Young’s party continue on through the Gila wilderness. If he’s going to stay in nuevomexico, find some land he can make his own, continue to pass as white, it might be best to do so away from Taos. Santa Fe might be a better option. It would be easier to blend in there.

Gerald grimaces. Perhaps. But with Sibley’s survey of the Santa Fe Trail, more people will be coming in from the States, including men with Enoch Jones’ prejudices. Besides, Santa Fe is several days journey from Taos. Suzanna will be reluctant to separate herself that far from her father.

Gerald chuckles and shakes his head at himself. He’s aggravated by comments from Wolfskill and Young about Suzanna Peabody, yet here he is, making assumptions himself. Or at least daydreaming. He has no right to such thoughts. Yet the images linger—slim brown hands reaching for the teacups, that willowy form striding beside him toward her plot of potatoes, her face turned toward him, steady black eyes level with his.

When he comes out of his reverie, he finds Ignacio Sandoval beside him, head down, watching the path. “Where’s your mule?” Gerald asks in surprise.

Ignacio gestures toward the back of the line. “We strung them together,” he says. “Gregorio and I.” He shrugs. “It is more interesting to walk together than to see only the back end of a mule.”

Gerald chuckles and glances ahead, where the back end of Thomas Smith’s new animal blocks his own view forward. “I see what you mean,” he says.

“And I wished to speak to you privately,” Ignacio says. He glances ahead uneasily. “When there is little chance of being overheard.”

“Yes?”

But Ignacio is silent, his head turning to examine the pine and cedar through which they’re climbing. Gerald studies the younger man’s face, then turns to cluck at his mule. The animal twitches his ears, huffs impatiently, and looks away.

They walk perhaps thirty minutes before Ignacio speaks again. “There was a letter from mi papá waiting for me in Taos.”

Gerald grins. “That was excellent timing,” he says. “Did you answer it in a way that will allay your father’s suspicions?”

Ignacio nods, his eyes anxious. “I do not like to lie to my parents,” he says. “But it is sometimes necessary.”

Gerald nods sympathetically.

 “In the letter, he gave me news.” Ignacio breaks off to move ahead and allow Gerald and the mule to negotiate a particularly rocky, and therefore treacherous, piece of trail. When he rejoins them, he seems reluctant to go on. “Perhaps it is nothing,” he says. “My father worries a great deal about almost everything.” He makes a small hopeless gesture. “My mother believes it is nothing.”

Gerald chuckles. “In my experience, it’s the mothers who worry.”

Ignacio laughs. “It is not so in mi familia. I think sometimes my mother has decided mi papá worries enough for both of them.” His voice changes, the anxiety gone. “One day when they were newly married, he told her with great excitement that the well had gone dry. Even she was concerned at the possibility that this was true. He was beside himself with worry. But when mamá went out to investigate, she discovered that the bucket, it had developed a hole!” He laughs. “Papá was muy, how do you say—”

“Embarrassed?” Gerald asks with a grin.

“Si, embarrassed. He was embarrassed.” He laughs again. “Poor papá. Now when he begins to worry, mamá asks if he has checked for a hole in the bucket.” He chuckles, his eyes sparkling.

Gerald smiles and clucks at the mule again and they walk on. Whatever has been bothering the younger man seems to have been removed by the story, and after the mid-day break he rejoins Gregorio and the pack mules they’re responsible for.

The trappers push through the mountains for ten long days, following the Gila as it drops west out of the pines and into dryer country, toward the mouth of the Salt. They begin to see Apache sign again—moccasin tracks, old fires—but this time nothing disappears from camp. Ewing Young establishes two-hour watches. With thirty men, this means no one watches every night, so there are no complaints, except from Enoch Jones, who demands an extra ration of whisky for his trouble. Young isn’t forthcoming.

Jones mutters for a solid week, becoming more and more surly, but Ewing Young ignores him. He has his hands full with Thomas Smith and Milton Sublette, who are hell bent on making the Apaches pay for what they did to Smith’s mule and Sublette’s leg.

Young vetoes the idea of trying to locate the Indians’ camp and taking the battle to them. For one thing, it’s unlikely that even the most experienced American tracker can find the Apache encampment, unless the Indians want him to. For another thing, hunting Apache will take time away from the trappers’ primary task. Now that he’s reached untrapped waters, Young wants to focus on beaver, not revenge.

But Smith isn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer. In fact, he’s even enlisted Enoch Jones in his schemes.

“I’m for just cuttin’ out on our own and doing a little huntin’,” Gerald hears Smith telling Jones one morning as he rubs oil onto the stock of his rifle.

Gregorio is kneeling on the ground nearby, mixing tortillas for the morning meal. Jones spits toward Gregorio’s big wooden bowl, but the boy shifts slightly, blocking the bowl. The spittle lands on the ground next to the barrel of flour, which stands beside him. Gregorio looks away from the two men. He glances at Gerald, on the other side of the fire, then toward the pine and rocks beyond.

His hands freeze in the batter. “Apache!” he exclaims.

The trappers all turn at once. A loose line of long-haired warriors stands among the rocks and pines at the far side of the clearing. The man in the center sports a large palmetto hat and scarlet leggings and long sleeve shirt. It’s the Chief who confronted Wolfskill. Three warriors are positioned on his left, two on his right. As before, another warrior stands slightly back, an arrow fletched in his lightly-held bow.

There’s a long silence, then Ewing Young makes a welcoming motion.

The man in the hat moves forward. He stops beside the fire and looks slowly around the clearing, as if he’s appraising the value of every item in sight, including the rifle in Thomas Smith’s hands.

Then his gaze falls on Gregorio. He points at the barrel of flour. “Meal!” he commands.

Ewing Young frowns, then nods. The Chief picks a wool blanket up from a nearby rock and flicks it open, an edge in each hand.

“That’s mine!” Enoch Jones protests.

Smith shakes his head at him. “I’ll give you mine,” he says. Then he steps backward into the trees, and begins circling toward Gregorio and the flour.

The Chief positions himself in front of the barrel and lets Jones’ blanket sag slightly between his hands, forming a kind of container.

Ewing Young waves Gregorio aside, leans over the barrel, and begins scooping out double handfuls of flour. As he drops them into the blanket, a dusty haze rises into the morning air.

The Apache turns his head and gives his men a satisfied smile. He doesn’t see Thomas Smith step from the trees behind Gregorio, rifle cocked and ready.

Young pours another double handful of flour into the blanket and holds up his white-dusted palms to show that he’s finished.

The Apache leader growls something unintelligible in response.

Young scowls and raises two fingers. “Two more,” he says.

The Chief nods and lifts the blanket slightly, ready for more.

As Young reaches into the barrel again, Thomas Smith steps past Gregorio, shoves the rifle muzzle up under the blanket, and pulls the trigger. The bullet explodes through the cloth and blood-spattered flour splashes the Chief’s torso.

As the Apache crumples to the ground, his men dash into the clearing. Gunfire erupts. Arrows fly. A trapper drops, then an Apache, then another.

Ewing Young, his upper body coated in white flour, shakes his deafened head. Then an arrow flashes through the air and bites into the ground at his feet. He lunges for his rifle and aims into the trees. But the Indians are already gone, vanished into the rocks and the pines.

The Chief lies where he fell, his red sleeves dusted with flour, his chest an incongruous paste of flour and blood.

Thomas Smith stands over him, his own face and hair coated in white. “That’ll teach ’em!” he says triumphantly. He grins at Enoch Jones, who’s crouched beside a dead Apache, the man’s beaded knife sheath in his hands. “That’s worth a hole in a blanket, ain’t it?”

Enoch Jones grins back at him, his eyes glittering. “Three dead, four t’ go!” he agrees. “They can’t be far yet.”

“Three dead’s enough,” Ewing Young says grimly as he beats flour from his clothes. “That was a stupid stunt, Smith. You think that’s all of them? If that band doesn’t come after us by nightfall, it’ll only be because they can’t decide who their new leader is.” His eyes glare from the flour still spattered across his face. “Next time you decide to shoot an Indian, don’t do it in my face, or I may just mistake you for one.”

 “Well, I wasn’t gonna stand by and just let you give ’em our flour!” Smith snaps. “Then they’d just be wantin’ more. You ain’t got the courage of a lizard!”

Young gives him a withering look and turns to Gregorio. “You all right, son?”

The boy has positioned himself behind the barrel of flour. He nods reluctantly and Jones looks up, then barks with laughter. He points at Gregorio’s thin cotton pants, which cling damply to his thighs. “He wet himself! Did more than that!” he chortles. “I can smell ya from here! You never seen a man die before, Miz Mollie?” He laughs again and yanks his bone-handled knife from the sheath at his waist. “Here’s something else for you to think on!”

He bends, grabs the dead Apache’s hair, pulls it out straight, then moves the steel blade swiftly down and across, cutting away the man’s scalp. He straightens and waves the bloody mass at Gregorio. “Here’s what happens t’ weaklings!”

The boy turns and stumbles out of the clearing. Jones laughs again. “Needs a good fuckin’ to make him a man,” he says. He looks down at the Apache’s body and nudges it with his moccasined toe. He swings his head and sees Ignacio Sandoval. “You! Mexican!” he barks. “Get rid o’ this thing!”

Ignacio looks at Young questioningly and Young nods. Gerald pushes his own nausea aside and steps forward. “I’ll help you with that,” he says.

“Two of a kind,” Enoch Jones sneers as Ignacio and Gerald lift the body, one on each end. “Gonna have a little fiesta after yer done, are ya?”

Milton Sublette limps into the clearing, leading a tall sorrel mare with a notch in its left ear. “Look what I found,” he says. “It must of got loose from the Injuns.”

“That ain’t no Injun horse,” Thomas Smith says. “Look at that head and those shoulders. That’s an American horse that’s been bred to run.” He narrows his eyes. “Seems to me like I’ve laid eyes on that sorrel before.”

Ewing Young steps to the mare, palm up, and she nickers softly. Young runs a hand over her withers. “This looks to me like Sylvester Pattie’s horse,” he says. He turns to Smith. “Didn’t you say he and his son were up this way last winter?”

“Yeah, they complained all last summer about how Sylvester’s horse was stolen by the Apaches around here last season,” Smith says. “The damn Injuns gave those Patties fits all the time they were here.”

“It’s always the same group causin’ the trouble.” Sublette says. “It don’t surprise me that this outfit had Pattie’s horse.” He shifts slightly, easing his leg. “Say, isn’t Jim Pattie comin’ back this way with Michel Robidoux’s group? I wonder if he knows his daddy’s mount is still kickin’.”

Copyright © 2018 Loretta Miles Tollefson

Thank you for your interest in Not Just Any Man. You can access other free chapters here. Want to get future chapters in your in-box? Sign up to follow me via email.

If you would like an ebook or print copy of this novel, it is available from your favorite brick and mortar store as well as Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or your favorite ebook retailer.